The Insider

This past summer, Jim Carrey managed to snag $20 million paychecks for his next two projects, and Sylvester Stallone landed a $60 million three-picture deal at Universal. Now comes word that Stallone's pal Bruce Willis is Hollywood's newest $20 Million Man. Willis will star in the big-screen version of Dean Koontz's thriller Mr. Murder for Savoy Pictures. It's due out mid-1996....

For O.J. Simpson prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, there is indeed life after losing. The two recently went to San Francisco, where, among other things, Clark went on a shopping spree at Macy's. After 2 hours of trying on clothes, she wound up spending $1,800 for two suits, some shoes, makeup and panty hose. As for Darden, I'm told that at Clark's behest he made frequent trips to the outer area of the women's dressing rooms to offer his opinions on the various outfits. Sounds pretty chummy, but their agent at William Morris, Norman Brokaw, claims that the pair are "just very good friends."...

In other post-trial news, I hear Simpson's first wife, Marquerite Simpson Thomas, was paid around $350,000 by Crown Publishers for her memoirs, in which, according to her agent, she'll "shed a lot of light on [O.J.'s] character and motivation." Expect the book sometime in '96....

In other book news, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks just made a middle six-figure deal with Harper-Collins to write a new book based on their famous "2,000 Year Old Man" sketch from the '60s. The working title is The Wit and Wisdom of the 2,000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000. It will come out in late 1997....

There's nothing like cross-pollination to boost ratings. In a forthcoming Bonnie Hunt Show, Bonnie Hunt's TV-reporter character will interview cast members from Chicago Hope; on The Nanny, Fran Drescher's character will visit the set of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and have a meeting with her idol, Jane Seymour....

Howard Stern may still be having trouble getting his best-selling book Private Parts to the screen, but that hasn't stopped him from furthering his movie career with a brief turn in someone else's film. Look for Stern in a cameo, as himself, in National Lampoon's The Love Boat, due next summer. The film's producer David Permut tells me that Stern's scene calls for him to pass by the ship in another boat called the Hate Boat....

Former prizefighter Jake LaMotta, played by Robert De Niro in director Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, is now in the tomato-sauce business with his son Joe. LaMotta, 74, boasts that the product, LaMotta's Tomatta, will be in stores by mid-November and is all natural, low-fat and kosher.